Tuesday 16 August 2011

A Single Exposure to the American Flag Shifts Support Toward Republicanism up to 8 Months Later

Psychological Science
August 2011 vol. 22 no. 8 1011-1018
Version of Record - Aug 16, 2011
doi: 10.1177/0956797611414726

Travis J. Carter [1], Melissa J. Ferguson [2] and Ran R. Hassin [3]

[1] Center for Decision Research, University of Chicago Booth School of Business, C74 Harper Center, Chicago, IL 60637
[2] Department of Psychology, 230 Uris Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853
[3] Department of Psychology and The Center for the Study of Rationality, Hebrew University

Abstract

There is scant evidence that incidental cues in the environment significantly alter people’s political judgments and behavior in a durable way. We report that a brief exposure to the American flag led to a shift toward Republican beliefs, attitudes, and voting behavior among both Republican and Democratic participants, despite their overwhelming belief that exposure to the flag would not influence their behavior. In Experiment 1, which was conducted online during the 2008 U.S. presidential election, a single exposure to an American flag resulted in a significant increase in participants’ Republican voting intentions, voting behavior, political beliefs, and implicit and explicit attitudes, with some effects lasting 8 months after the exposure to the prime. In Experiment 2, we replicated the findings more than a year into the current Democratic presidential term. These results constitute the first evidence that nonconscious priming effects from exposure to a national flag can bias the citizenry toward one political party and can have considerable durability.

http://pss.sagepub.com/content/22/8/1011

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Monday 1 August 2011

No evidence of contagious yawning in the red-footed tortoise Geochelone carbonaria

Current Zoology (formerly Acta Zoologica Sinica), 2011, 57(4): 477 - 484

Anna Wilkinson [1,2], Natalie Sebanz [3], Isabella Mandl [1], Ludwig Huber [1]

[1] Department of Cognitive Biology, University of Vienna, Althanstrasse 14, Vienna, 1090, Austria
[2] Department of Biological Sciences, University of Lincoln, Lincoln, LN2 2LG, UK
[3] Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behavior, Centre for Cognition, Radboud, University Nijmegen, P.O. Box 9104, 6500 HE Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Abstract:

Three hypotheses have attempted to explain the phenomenon of contagious yawning. It has been hypothesized that it is a fixed action pattern for which the releasing stimulus is the observation of another yawn, that it is the result of non-conscious mimicry emerging through close links between perception and action or that it is the result of empathy, involving the ability to engage in mental state attribution. This set of experiments sought to distinguish between these hypotheses by examining contagious yawning in a species that is unlikely to show nonconscious mimicry and empathy but does respond to social stimuli: the red-footed tortoise Geochelone carbonaria. A demonstrator tortoise was conditioned to yawn when presented with a red square-shaped stimulus. Observer tortoises were exposed to three conditions: observation of conditioned yawn, non demonstration control, and stimulus only control. We measured the number of yawns for each observer animal in each condition. There was no difference between conditions. Experiment 2 therefore increased the number of conditioned yawns presented. Again, there was no significant difference between conditions. It seemed plausible that the tortoises did not view the conditioned yawn as a real yawn and therefore a final experiment was run using video recorded stimuli. The observer tortoises were presented with three conditions: real yawn, conditioned yawns and empty background. Again there was no significant difference between conditions. We therefore conclude that the red-footed tortoise does not yawn in response to observing a conspecific yawn. This suggests that contagious yawning is not the result of a fixed action pattern but may involve more complex social processes.

Keywords:

Reptile, Contagious yawn, Empathy, Nonconscious mimicry, Fixed action pattern

http://www.currentzoology.org/paperdetail.asp?id=11922

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